Our Great Recession ended 2½ years ago, according to the official cyclical timekeepers, but you wouldn’t know it by a glance at the news. Zero percent interest rates and $1 trillion in “stimulus” notwithstanding, the U.S. economy can hardly seem to heave itself out of bed in the morning. Now compare this with the first full year of recovery from the ugly depression of 1920-21. In 1922, under the unsung stewardship of the president best remembered for his underlings’ scandals and his own early death in office, the unemployment rate fell from 15.6 percent to 9 percent (on its way to 3.2 percent in 1923), while constant-dollar output leapt by 16 percent. After which the 1920s proverbially roared.

And how did the administration of Warren G. Harding, in conjunction with the Federal Reserve, produce these astonishing results? Why, by raising interest rates, reducing the public debt and balancing the federal budget. Let 21st-century economists rub their eyes in disbelief. Eighteen months after the depression started, it ended.

There’s more good stuff in Grant’s article. And then there’s this about Harding from another writer:

The harsh summary judgment of Harding reflects the massive ideological and historical bias of the mid-twentieth century, when this image of Harding took root as a result of a relentless onslaught of partisan and sensational criticism. The course of Harding’s reputation is an object lesson in the contingency of historical reflection. Contemporary research has cast a more favorable light on Harding, but his poor reputation lingers—a lesson in how images, positive or negative, are hard to shake once they are lodged in the public mind. A dispassionate review of Harding’s record in office will support the conclusion that he was the kind of president the Founders would have approved.